Donald Trump savaged his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton on Wednesday, claiming she “may be the most corrupt person ever to seek the presidency” as he sought to paint himself as a steward of the working class and a political outsider with the vision to fix a “rigged” system.
One day after Clinton delivered a blistering assault on her opponent’s record as a businessman, Trump returned fire , leveling a litany of attacks against the former secretary of state.
“The choice in this election is a choice between taking our government back from the special interests, or surrendering our last scrap of independence to their total and complete control,” Trump said in a speech delivered from the chandelier ballroom of the Trump Soho hotel in New York.
In his 45-minute address, Trump reprised many of the same concerns conservatives and other detractors have long expressed about Clinton, over her trustworthiness and personal ethics. He blamed Clinton for destabilizing the Middle East and spreading “death, destruction and terrorism” as secretary of state. He also accused her and Bill Clinton of helping strengthen the Chinese economy through their support of “disastrous” trade deals that he said helped triggered an exodus of America’s “best jobs” abroad.
“In return, Hillary Clinton got rich … She gets rich making you poor,” Trump said, echoing an attack Clinton made against him on Tuesday. He continued to hammer home the point that Clinton, if elected, would cater to special interests at the expense of the American people.
Trump referred to the controversy over her private email server while secretary of state, the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens in Libya, the millions she earned from speeches to Wall Street banks and corporations and the Clinton Foundation’s acceptance of donations from regimes that oppress women and LGBT people.
“Currently tallying the number of lies about Hillary Clinton in the transcript of Trump’s speech,” Clinton’s campaign spokesman, Brian Fallon, tweeted after his speech. “I’m at 15 so far.”
In Raleigh on Wednesday, Clinton asked an enthusiastic crowd to consider the choices before them in November. To emphasize the contrast, Clinton detailed a five-point plan to achieve economic growth and repeated her claim that Trump offers “no real solutions” to solving the country’s economic challenges.
Clinton’s economic revitalization plan includes a major FDR-style jobs program, debt-free college, profit-sharing while outsourcing less, closing tax loopholes for Wall Street and the super-wealthy to exploit and modernizing child and family policies.
She then turned to her Republican opponent.
“I guess my speech yesterday must have gotten under his skin because right away he got on Twitter and lashed out with outlandish lies and conspiracy theories,” she said. “He’s going after me personally because he has no answers on the substance.”
Clinton said Trump relied on bluster and bombast to distract from the fact that he has offered only pronouncements and policy sketches rather than proposals and a clear agenda.
“That’s even why he’s attacking my faith,” Clinton said, referring to Trump’s comments a day earlier, when he suggested that the public knows very little about her faith.
Clinton paused. “Sigh.”
The crowd erupted in laughter.
On Tuesday, Clinton eviscerated Trump’s business record and economic agenda, predicting a financial meltdown that would be worse than 2008 should he be elected president. It was her second major speech seeking to cast her opponent as volatile and unqualified for the office.
“Just like he shouldn’t have his finger on the button,” Clinton said, referring to the nuclear launch codes, “he shouldn’t have his hands on our economy.”
On Wednesday, Trump defended his “amazing” success as a businessman who turned a humble loan into an empire worth “over $10bn”.
“I have always had a talent for building businesses and, importantly, creating jobs. That is a talent our country desperately needs,” Trump said.
Trump’s campaign had planned for him to deliver the speech last Monday, but postponed it in the wake of the deadly attack at an LGBT nightclub in Orlando, Florida.
The carefully calibrated speech was the latest signal from the Trump campaign that he is turning sharply to November amid growing panic among Republicans that their candidate is not mounting a competitive campaign against Clinton.
The presumptive Republican nominee is trailing Clinton in opinion polls, and new surveys show him losing ground to her in key battleground states. On Monday, after weeks of controversy over Trump’s racially charged remarks, the candidate fired his campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski. Meanwhile, recently released campaign finance numbers showed that Trump has raised a historically low amount of cash, just $1.3m, staggeringly less than his Democratic opponent, who reported $42.5m.
During his speech on Wednesday, Trump also made an explicit appeal to supporters of her Democratic opponent, Bernie Sanders, who has not yet formally quit the race.
“We’re asking Bernie Sanders voters to join our movement so together we can fix the system for all Americans,” Trump said, and borrowing almost directly from the senator’s playbook, added: “It’s not just the political system that’s rigged. It’s the whole economy.”
In closing, Trump listed a series of lofty goals for the first 100 days of a Trump administration, including the appointment of supreme court justices who will “uphold the constitution”, change the immigration laws to protect American jobs and instate major tax reforms. Notably absent from the list was a direct reference to building a wall along the US-Mexico border and instating an entry ban on Muslim immigrants.
“We are going to make America rich again,” Trump promised. “We are going to make America safe again and we are going to make America great again.”
